Instead, it's an etiquette guide-meets-self-help book, written with a delightful bounce and absence of self-pity. But the chances are that at some time in your life, possibly only now and then between husbands, you will find yourself settling down to a solitary existence.” “Five out of ten people of the people who do so can’t help themselves, and at least three of the others are irritatingly selfish. “This book is no brief in favour of living alone,” reads the opening line. Hillis was in her mid-40s and had spent nearly 30 years working at Vogue – hired as a caption writer back in 1907, she had risen up the ranks to associate editor – and she lived alone in an apartment in the desirable Tudor City complex in Manhattan's Midtown.ĭespite the independence she had secured for herself (she hailed from a comfortable if conservative Brooklyn family, her father was a preacher and her mother a homemaker), Hillis wasn't exactly an ardent feminist, nor was Live Alone and Like It a manifesto advocating solitary living, but rather a practical (albeit it for the relatively privileged) 'how (best) to' guide. Published in July, it raced up the bestseller lists – more than 16,000 copies sold in August, 19,000 in September, and an astonishing 22,366 in October. Knowing when to let go.I n the United States, in 1936, Marjorie Hillis's Live Alone and Like It: The Classic Guide for the Single Woman became an unlikely success. 'Hotbed' exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. Writing while researching. Keeping track (and losing track) of your research. Support your public library! Adapting independence to marriage.

Figuring out what kind of book you want to write. Writing 'cocktail party nuggets.' Cheating on your dissertation. Divorce panic, marriage pressure, and what we get wrong about the 1950s. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and lives in New York. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, and a contributor to the New Republic, the Guardian and other publications. She holds a Ph.D.

The Extra Woman by Joanna Scutts